Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to North Carolina Wednesday, where she pitched unity and bipartisanship one day after President Biden undercut that message by maligning Trump voters as “garbage.”
Speaking from Raleigh, North Carolina, Ms. Harris dedicated nearly half of her 15-minute speech to telling voters she would respect those who disagree with her. She said her approach is different from former President Donald Trump, whom she depicted as plotting vengeance against his political opponents.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table,” she said.
Mr. Biden touched off a political firestorm and headache for Ms. Harris when he called Trump voters “garbage” in an attempt to rebuke a joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
At the event, Mr. Hinchcliffe joked that Puerto Rico was “a floating island of garbage.”
On Tuesday’s video call for Latino outreach, Mr. Biden defended the Puerto Rican community and appeared to use the same insult against Trump’s supporters.
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“They’re good, decent, honorable people,” the president said, referring to Puerto Ricans. “The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.”
The White House quickly went into damage control. It issued a transcript that attempted to clean up Mr. Biden’s words by adding an apostrophe to “supporters,” saying that the president was condemning Mr. Hinchcliffe’s joke.
Ms. Harris distanced herself from the comments, which overshadowed her big campaign rally on the Ellipses.
In Raleigh, Ms. Harris reiterated her pledge to “be a president for all Americans.”
“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to the challenges you face,” she told the crowd. “I’m looking to make progress, and I pledge to you, I will listen to experts. I will listen to those impacted by the decisions I make and to the people who disagree with me.”
However, Ms. Harris later said she sees “the promise of America” in the Republicans who have crossed the aisle to endorse her candidacy. Ms. Harris has been endorsed by more than 200 Republican former officials, including several who worked in the Trump administration.
North Carolina is one of seven battleground states that will determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 election. Mr. Trump also held a rally in the Tar Heel State on Wednesday in Rocky Mount.
North Carolina is the only swing state Mr. Trump won in 2020, eking out a victory by 1.5 percentage points over Mr. Biden. The last Democrat to win the state was President Obama in 2008, though it has had a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, since 2017.
Mr. Trump currently leads Ms. Harris by one percentage point in the state, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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